The US president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, will once again join Washington’s delegation
RT composite. © Getty Images/Oleksii Liskonih;Tasos Katopodis;Craig Hudson
Washington’s
delegation at the trilateral Russia-US-Ukraine talks in Geneva next
week will include American envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner,
Reuters reported on Saturday, citing a source briefed on the matter.
On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmedthat
the trilateral negotiations to settle the Ukraine conflict will take
place on February 17 and 18 in Geneva. No Western European nations will
be represented, he added.
Russia’s delegation will be headed by
presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, who has already participated in
several rounds of Russian-Ukrainian talks.
In a statement on
Friday, Ukraine’s national security chief Rustem Umerov announced that
he would again be leading Kiev’s delegation. The other members will
include Vladimir Zelensky’s new chief of staff and former military
intelligence chief Kirill Budanov, general staff chief Andrey Gnatov,
and several other senior officials.
According to Reuters, Witkoff and Kushner will attend the three-way
talks as part of the US delegation in the afternoon, after participating
in negotiations with an Iranian delegation that morning. Neither was
present at the last round, which took place in the UAE last week. Moscow
described it as “constructive but difficult,” while Witkoff noted that the diplomatic effort was gleaning “tangible results.”
According to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the trilateral talks have trimmed down the range of issues between the sides.
“The bad news is they've been narrowed to the hardest questions to answer,” he said at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.
One of the biggest remaining points of contention between Russia and
Ukraine is territories. Moscow has insisted that a stable peace can only
be achieved if Kiev withdraws soldiers from any territories it still
controls in Donbass – which voted to join Russia in 2022 – among other
key demands.
Moscow had agreed to several compromises and settled
on a realistic peace roadmap after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s
summit with his US counterpart Donald Trump in Alaska last year,
according to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Putin-Trump Alaska Summit
On August 15, 2025, Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump held a meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, to discuss ways to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The two leaders spoke for three hours, afterwards praising the talks as productive and promising of a breakthrough. During the summit, Putin insisted on the necessity of a lasting peace settlement, as opposed to a ceasefire Kiev and its EU backers have been calling for. Trump emerged from the talks sharing this sentiment. He also said Ukraine may have to give up territories in order for this settlement to take place – something Ukrainianleader Vladimir Zelensky categorically rejects.
However, this peace drive has been
systematically undermined by Kiev and its Western European backers since
then, he stated on Wednesday.